Column: N.C. State should win ACC tournament

By Bob Sutton

Published: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 11:05 AM.

N.C. State played its lone meetings with both Virginia and Miami with Brown injured. He went down in the Virginia game with an ankle ailment and missed most of it, then sat out the next two games in losses to Miami and Duke — the first- and second-place finishers in the league.

So given that the Wolfpack was 11-4 in the conference outside of those three games, it was on pace to be among the elite group.

For whatever reason, Brown’s absence and the impact it had on the Wolfpack hasn’t been nearly such a popular topic as down the road at Duke. There, the absence of forward Ryan Kelly for nearly two months has been a regular source of discussion when it comes to NCAA Tournament seeding.

Without Brown, the Wolfpack was in a predicament that was equivalent if not more devastating that of the Duke situation.

Yet that’s not a development that has been pounded into the consciousness of the college basketball world.

Back to this week’s tournament set-up, it’s reasonable to assume that a four-games-in-four-days scenario might not bode well for the Wolfpack. N.C. State doesn’t use much more than a seven-player rotation if it can help it.

North Carolina State should win the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament.

This is an ideal situation for the Wolfpack, a postseason-savvy group that’s swirling below the radar again.

The Wolfpack has underachieved to this point if you consider its status as preseason favorite in the ACC.

After N.C. State’s 3-0 start in conference play, it’s hard to imagine that the Wolfpack fell so far that North Carolina finished two spots ahead of it in the standings.

Holding the No. 5 seed shouldn’t be viewed as a disaster because the Wolfpack won twice from that position a year ago in the tournament.

“We were hoping we’d end up in that fourth spot,” N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried said. “Didn’t happen. So we’re going to approach it like we did last year. We were in the same position.”

Facing last-place Virginia Tech is a rematch of an overtime game. An encounter with Virginia and then likely Miami should be good matchups for N.C. State, especially with Lorenzo Brown in the lineup.

N.C. State played its lone meetings with both Virginia and Miami with Brown injured. He went down in the Virginia game with an ankle ailment and missed most of it, then sat out the next two games in losses to Miami and Duke — the first- and second-place finishers in the league.

So given that the Wolfpack was 11-4 in the conference outside of those three games, it was on pace to be among the elite group.

For whatever reason, Brown’s absence and the impact it had on the Wolfpack hasn’t been nearly such a popular topic as down the road at Duke. There, the absence of forward Ryan Kelly for nearly two months has been a regular source of discussion when it comes to NCAA Tournament seeding.

Without Brown, the Wolfpack was in a predicament that was equivalent if not more devastating that of the Duke situation.

Yet that’s not a development that has been pounded into the consciousness of the college basketball world.

Back to this week’s tournament set-up, it’s reasonable to assume that a four-games-in-four-days scenario might not bode well for the Wolfpack. N.C. State doesn’t use much more than a seven-player rotation if it can help it.

No team has won the ACC Tournament by needing to win four games.

“I think it’s possible,” Gottfried said.

A year ago, the extra game in the first round probably enhanced N.C. State’s stock for the NCAA Tournament, then the quarterfinals conquest of Virginia apparently sealed it.

Instead of the number of games required to become champion, a more pressing issue for the Wolfpack will be figuring out how its defense is going to be up to snuff for extended stretches to avoid the pitfalls.

Despite warnings issued from Gottfried, N.C. State was dubbed the ACC preseason favorite,

But it was last year’s ACC Tournament followed by advancing to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 round that supplied the credibility for the Wolfpack.